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Petition to make unlocking phones legal again passes 100,000 signatures
- gesman 14y agoWould be great to have this: collect 1,000,000 votes for petition and it goes to Senate for mandatory voting. Otherwise it's impossible to penetrate the wall between government and people via "your vote, we write response, maybe" - type of approach.
- sp332 14y agoThat's not a bad idea. In fact many states have implemented this already. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Initiatives_and_referendums_in_the_United_States#Initiatives https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Initiatives_and_referendums_in...
- maxerickson 14y agoHow long would it be before some hooligans ran a DOS campaign against the Senate?
- dragonwriter 14y ago> Would be great to have this: collect 1,000,000 votes for petition and it goes to Senate for mandatory voting. Heck, we don't even have a "collect singatures of a majority of Senators and it goes to the Senate for mandatory voting" rule, so its not surprising that we don't have a "collect signatures of less than 1% of eligible voters and it goes to the Senate for mandatory voting" rule.
- StevenXC 14y agoI'm interested in the White House's response, but anticipate the issue basically being blown off.
- tellarin 14y agoI kind of agree, but it is good that some attention might be brought to the issue (not necessarily the government's). My concern is that the WH might once again raise the number of needed signatures for the next petitions! as there are still many reaching the target.
- nonamegiven 14y agoI think Colonel Cathcart works in the White House.
- TheCapn 14y agoPeople have it in their heads that a successful petition is supposed to mean there will be change but that was never promised. I've always felt petitions were used by lawmakers to help filter noise. If you set a threshold for the amount of support any cause needs before you'll address it (preventing you from having to listen to each person individually) the petition system seems only logical. If the lawmakers now see that 100,000+ people are against their decisions they promised to make a response but have no obligation to change anything. This is where people's voting power is supposed to matter. If the representatives are always ignoring the issues that are deemed important by petition/protest groups then why should the be expected to get re-election? Its sort of a shit deal where we're hoping the channels they provide will show some benefit or marshal of change but I haven't seen that happen yet. I'm not American so I'm somewhat distanced from everything but it has always seemed like these petitions were just another campaign tool and never intended to be taken seriously by gov't.
- brador 14y agoIf only there was a website where voters could see how every politician voted on every vote they've ever made when in power. It would cut right through any BS.
- smogzer 14y agoWhat about a petition to prevent lawmakers from creating legislation that turns regular people into criminals. One simple legislation to rule them all. The GOML (Get off my lawn) law.
- duaneb 14y agoWhat exactly do these petitioners expect? A) there are far more important things to do, IMHO, then spending time wrestling telco companies over this, and B) the White House has to do zilch but respond. I love petitions, but people getting angry over e.g. repeatedly not legalizing marijuana after 0.03% of americans signed something I find confusing and frustrating. It's almost as if people are easier to ignore if they solely protest through these petitions....
- pyre 14y agoThis was a recent change by made by the copyright office, to revoke "phone unlocking" as an exception to the DMCA. The copyright office is under the President, IIRC, so the White House has the ability to directly affect this. The other route is to just codify the exception into law, but pushing a law through about this takes time.
- nodata 14y agoEither you are being naive or you are puroposefully misunderstanding or simplifying the issue. 1. It doesn't matter if there are "more important things to do". If it did, Silicon Valley wouldn't exist, and poverty wouldn't exist. 2. If the Whitehouse invents a petition system to allow people to show what is important to them, people expect the Whitehouse to react and do something about those things.
- prawks 14y agoIt appeases the throngs of slacktivists that run amok on the Internet, primarily. As has been stated elsewhere, the only real effect this can have is if it gains media traction. Which, given than there are celebrities and murders to report on, is always very unlikely in the US. If 100,000 people wrote personalized letters to their congressmen and women, it would likely have a much more substantial affect. The problem is that people prefer a "fix my problem" button.
- manaskarekar 14y agoIt's funny how you have to petition to have lawmakers pay attention to an issue, when by definition, those people are there to represent the interest of the majority in the first place.
- adrr 14y agoIf all 100k people chipped in a $100, it would have more effect than this petition. We live in a time where it takes money to get elected.
- mtgx 14y agoThat's why I think financing campaigns should only be done by individuals and with a cap of $100 each to "equalize" the money vote, just like you equalize the regular vote, by giving a person the same vote everyone gets. But the way the system works now, the "money vote" seems to be much more powerful than the real vote, and because certain individuals or corporations can put as much money as they want on that vote, that ends up skewing the election and the way the politician will fight for certain bills, greatly. So put a cap on how much you can donate, and ban corporations from donating. Only individuals should be able to donate. I don't care that they think they need $100 million to get elected, and with this they'd only get $10 million. The point is their competitors will only get by with that much, too, but in a much fairer system, where the voices of many more people have to be listened to, instead of just the voices of a few.
- eshvk 14y agoI think the logic behind corporate financing/lobbying is that if you allow individuals to contribute money separately, there is no reason why organized groups should not band together, analyze the election, choose a candidate and pay $100 for every one of their members to that candidate's campaign. This organized machine is going to always trump a bunch of individuals haphazardly contributing money.
- warfangle 14y ago
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- speeder 14y agoThis is something that I like in Brazillian laws, in Brazil carriers are supposed to always provide "portability", this mean that you can keep your phone numbers when you change your carrier. The "portability" laws, also say that the carriers themselves have to unlock your phones if you want to change carrier. This ensures that a carrier cannot make you locked to them by using phone lock or number lock. It is highly interesting. Maybe facilitated by the fact that all carriers here use GSM (people think that CDMA is shit, and like the fact that GSM chips are harder to clone than CDMA phones).
- breckenedge 14y agoIn the US, we also get to port our numbers to new carriers. It's been this way for a while. Do Brazilian carriers offer contract-subsidized phones? Many carriers here will unlock your phone once your contract is complete. See AT&T's unlock details at [1] [1] https://www.att.com/deviceunlock/client/en_US/ https://www.att.com/deviceunlock/client/en_US/
- StavrosK 14y agoIn Greece, all carriers offer subsidies for most phones (some are even free with a plan), and every single phone is unlocked. It makes no sense for them to sell locked phones, since you can't get out of paying your dues for the duration of the contract anyway. The lock-in is in the contract, not the phone, so locking the phone as well is unnecessary.
- speeder 14y agoYes, a lot actually, in fact carriers here are infamous for offering phones even for free depending on the contract, resulting into one carrier once making a ad, saying that their bonuses for long term costumers were cash, because "paying" with phones was silly. But the law says that if the costumer want to end his contract, then he will pay his fines or whatever, but the carrier must unlock the phone. Also you see "unlocking stores" frequently on metro stations for example, it is perfectly legal, and encouraged by the government, to incentive some free market between carriers (here we have 4 big GSM carriers, some people even own prepaid GSM chips of all of them).
- znowi 14y agoA mere fact that there's a White House petition for something that in other countries is an indefeasible right - use your phone with any carrier you please - greatly saddens me. I find it astonishing how the Land of the Free can tolerate such treatment.
- bluedanieru 14y agoThere's a reason you had to capitalize it.
- analyst74 14y agoOK, something I don't understand. What's to stop someone from opening a store that sells unlocked phones? Is it because of the lack of carrier discount? If that's the case, people have already voted with their money on what they value more.
- betterunix 14y ago"people have already voted with their money on what they value more" 1. We do not vote with money in America. Poor people get as much of a vote as rich people in this country. 2. By making jailbreaking illegal, the government is giving carriers a special legal status that makes it harder for anyone else to compete. If you want a market-based solution to life's problems, you cannot have the government swoop in and give special privilege to certain players.
- jzworkman 14y agoYour point number 1 is a little naive. Money and interest groups drive policy. While the poor may have just as much vote in an election, the power to change policy generally is focused on the interest groups that most support that politician. So while people may not "vote with money" policy is very much money driven.
- betterunix 14y agoSure, that is how it works in practice, but nothing in the constitution of this country says, "Money buys laws!" We are generally unhappy with the idea that wealthy corporations have hijacked our legal system, because most Americans believe their vote matters just as much as every other person's vote (or at least every other person in their district).
- gnaritas 14y ago> Sure, that is how it works in practice Which is all that matters. How it should work in theory, matters very little. > If you want a market-based solution to life's problems Big "if", for many things, many don't want the depth of their wallet to determine their access to necessary services.
- sinak 14y agoHey everyone, I started this petition. Very glad we made it to 100k, and excited to see how the White House responds. I'm well aware that the WH may not take any real action though. Please sign up at http://fixthedmca.org http://fixthedmca.org if you care about this issue and want to continue helping the move to fix this issue permanently.
- nateabele 14y agoYeah, I hate to be that guy, but the 'petition to end all petitions' comes to mind. Particularly the bits about 'politically safe non-answers' and 'channeling public activism into a cul-de-sac'. :-/
- kaybe 14y agoI can recommend this article: http://swampland.time.com/2013/01/31/we-the-people/ http://swampland.time.com/2013/01/31/we-the-people/ It argues that the reason for petitions to exist is the possibility to open a dialog to the people who are concerned about certain topics (because the petition website gets your email adress), and that in the time of fractioning news consumption it is a useful way to keep communicating, whatever that means. edit: Ok, why the heck do they call their page Swampland?
- nateabele 14y agoMaybe I'm just cynical (okay, I'm probably just cynical), but that looks like a slightly more positive spin on essentially the same idea: a whole lot of 'communicating' and no action. > edit: Ok, why the heck do they call their page Swampland? Probably because it's about politics, and according to popular myth, DC was built on a swamp.
- carlisle_ 14y agoFirst step to action is communication. Politicians aren't mind readers, they need to communicate with their constituents to understand their wants. Whether or not a petition is an effective means of communication I'm not qualified to answer, but it seems like a better option than doing nothing at all.
- donniezazen 14y agoWhen someone is not paying the full price of a phone, how can they expect to do anything with the phone? People don't actually own them.
- mokus 14y ago> People don't actually own them. Of course they do. If I buy a new house or car, I don't have to pay the full price up front, but when I have finished paying for it I absolutely do own it. Subsidized phones are essentially loans. You pay for them over the course of your contract or with early termination fees, and when the contract is over you own them 100%.
- donniezazen 14y agoThey do allow you to unlock the phone after two years.
- thedufer 14y agoIf by "they" you mean "some carriers". They are by no means required to do so, and there's no reason to believe that they will continue to do so.
- donniezazen 14y agoIt is absolutely ridiculous to compare a property, if modest would steal your treasures to amount of 200K, with a 500 bucks phone. Nice thing would be if people abandon this culture of getting subsidized phones and then blame carriers for implementing restrictions.
- darkarmani 14y ago> People don't actually own them. I think you need to read up on property law or show me what law I'm ignorant of that says you don't actually own the phone.
- 14y ago
- Karunamon 14y agoWelp, got halfway down the page before the pessimist, defeatist "It's just a petition, you're wasting your time" responses started. Better than usual, I suppose.
- aleyan 14y agoI am glad this thing is happening. Unlike most other petitions that require changing law through Congress, this rests on a single individual. DMCA exemption can be made, and in case of phone unlocking have been made, by the Librarian at Library of Congress. He is appointed by the President and works at the behest of the Congress. The decision to allow the exemption to DMCA is completely up to him, and could be potentially influenced by such a petition.
- diminoten 14y agoWe need to stop calling these "Petition to <thing>". These are not petitions for things to happen. This is not a petition to make phone unlocking legal again, it's a petition for the Whitehouse to write a response. Furthermore, these petitions aren't going to be seen by lawmakers, as someone in the below comment says. Strictly speaking, the President is part of the executive branch, not the legislative branch, so in any event, no "lawmaker" will be seeing these petitions at all.
- Shivetya 14y agooh I am pretty many of the lawmakers have interns or the likes whose job it is to watch certain sites for trends and such.
- diminoten 14y agoI sure hope so, but I just wanted to be clear that it's not part of the workflow for one of these things to pass in front of any elected member of congress. I have this fear that people will think signing these petitions is "enough" (or "anything" really) and won't do more to push their particular issue. This literally does nothing but solicit a response from the White House, and 99% of the time (likely 100% but I don't know that for sure), the response could have been written by anyone familiar with the White House's already-public stance on the issue.
- cschneid 14y agoWell, for this specific issue, it was an executive branch decision that allowed, and now doesn't allow unlocking. Laws are often just "hey, executive, do this", and the executive figures it out (see also: EPA, FTC and lots more).
- jobu 14y agoFast forward to next week: "The White House announces a new threshold of 500,000 signatures before it will respond to online petitions." I was initially enthusiastic about these online petitions, but it doesn't seem like any of them have had an effect.
- Nursie 14y agoAre they new? We've had them in the UK starting from about 7 or 8 years ago, unsure if we still do. All that ever happened when one reached the 'must get a response' threshold was some staffer would write a couple of quick sentences about how they weren't going to do whatever the thing was, and how you were wrong for wanting it. Useless exercise all round.
- ratherbefuddled 14y agoActually in the UK anything getting 100k signatures is considered for debate in the House of Commons. You can see a list of debates that began in this manner (warning, pdf) here: http://www.parliament.uk/documents/commons-committees/backbench-business/Outcomes%20of%20e-petitions.pdf http://www.parliament.uk/documents/commons-committees/backbe...
- Nursie 14y agoIs that new? Under Blair/Brown it was a waste of time and I've mostly been out of the country since then.
- bjustin 14y agoNow come on, the reason they raised the bar from 25,000 to 100,000 is to keep up with the site's increasing popularity. They could have set the bar to 100,000 at the site's launch instead of 5,000, but no petitions would have reached the threshold. As for petitions actually having results, I imagine they are the weakest form of lobbying possible. The executive branch sees them and that is all.
- 14y ago
- dfrey 14y agoI would rather see locking phones become illegal. Locked devices only serve to keep people stuck with a provider.
- datalus 14y agoWhat if I told you... Obama doesn't give a shit?
- codex 14y agoThis petition asks the President to interfere with the implementation of law, and to politicize the decisions of the Librarian of Congress, a non-partisan post. While the President may use his office to champion new laws, he cannot make them himself, or overturn them.